PBS Kids

PBS had historically aired programs for children such as Sesame Street, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, and Reading Rainbow; prior to 1993, these programs aired under general PBS branding. In August 1993, PBS introduced new branding for their children's programs featuring "The P-Pals", animated characters shaped like PBS logos who encouraged skills such as gathering information, self-esteem, cooperation and achieving goals in specially developed interstitials.

The framework for PBS Kids was established as part of PBS' "Ready to Learn" initiative, a project intended to facilitate access of early childhood educational programming to underprivileged children.[4] On July 11, 1994, PBS repackaged their existing children's educational programming as a new block called "PTV", airing on 11 member stations at launch.[5][6] In addition to scheduled educational programming, PTV also incorporated interstitial content with the P-Pals in their fictional world "PTV Park" for younger children.[5] Older children were targeted with live-action and music video interstitials.[5]

Apple Computer provided a $1.5 million grant to PTV and became its first national underwriter on June 26, 1995, as part of their "Bring Learning Home" corporate initiative.[7] A "Ready To Learn" grant unveiled on January 8, 1996, supported the development of Dragon Tales and Between the Lions, which premiered in 1999 and 2000, respectively, as well as their online activities and outreach efforts.[8] By September 1996, 95 PBS stations reaching three quarters of the United States were carrying the PTV service.[9] Starting on October 7, 1996, PBS packaged their programs for school-aged children into the block The Game, airing on 31 stations by the end of the year.

PBS announced on January 18, 1999, that it would launch the PBS Kids Channel, meant to be the centerpiece of a larger initiative, in September.[10] On June 9, PBS revealed a wide rebranding of its children's programs and services, known as PBS Kids, at its annual meeting in San Francisco. PBS would also increase its children's programming budget by 25% and commit to two new series: Caillou and Anne of Green Gables: The Animated Series.[11]

The rebranding to "PBS Kids" first took effect on September 6, 1999, when PBS launched the 24-hour PBS Kids television network.[12] The new PBS Kids branding elements began rolling out on PBS stations in October; PBS provided grants to stations who adopted the new branding early. Brand designers incorporated a thought bubble concept across the brand packaging, intended to associate "imagination, thinking and using your head" with PBS Kids.[13] Included with the new on-air appearance was a bright green logo featuring iconic boy and girl mascot characters. The PBS Kids website was relaunched with some new areas on February 1, 2000.[14]

The PBS Kids Channel was shut down on September 26, 2005, in favor of a new commercial cable and satellite joint venture channel, PBS Kids Sprout. However, the PBS Kids block continued on the PBS daytime schedule.

One year prior to the launch of Sprout, PBS developed PBS Kids Go!, a sub-brand of PBS Kids, which debuted in October 2004. This programming block was directed at the oldest subset of the existing PBS Kids demographic (generally ages 6 to 8). This spurred plans for a new 24/7 service. PBS offered a replacement early school-aged kids network based on the block PBS Kids Go! by April 2006, intended to be launched in October 2006,[15] but was cancelled before launch.[16] Amid 2011 research which revealed that the PBS Kids brand was more recognizable than PBS Kids Go!, and ratings which showed preschoolers and school-age children watching each other's shows, PBS Kids received another graphic redesign and the PBS Kids Go! branding was dissolved on October 7, 2013, coinciding with the debut of Peg + Cat.[17]

PBS later revived the PBS Kids Channel on January 16, 2017, this time being structured as a multi-platform service with an online livestream of the channel on the PBS Kids website and video app, in addition to utilizing largely the same distribution methods that had been used for the original channel.[18] At the time of launch, no changes were made to the main PBS Kids block. The block is counter programmed from the channel, thus the same show would not be shown at the same time on the channel and block.[19][20][21] PBS Kids Channel is also available on DirecTV and DirecTV Stream on channel 288.[22]

In November 2020, PBS Kids, in association with the main PBS service, became the terrestrial television home of select specials from the Peanuts animated library, under a sub-licensing agreement with Apple TV+.[23] The agreement allowed both PBS and PBS Kids Channel to air It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, and A Charlie Brown Christmas over the air, once per year. After the 2021 holiday season, the agreement with PBS ended, and since then, the Peanuts specials have not aired on American broadcast television.[24]

Former logo used before re-branding in 2022. This logo was first introduced in 1999; shown here is the 2009 version with former mascot Dash in it.

In June 2022, it was announced that PBS Kids would inaugurate a new, text-only logo set upon a disc element, on July 19, 2022.[25] To create a more cohesive brand identity, the color of the new logo matches the blue coloring of PBS logo from 2019, while maintaining the familiar bright green for some of the lettering.[26]

In February 2023, a major shift in program scheduling reduced the duration of the daytime PBS Kids block on local PBS stations significantly.[27][28] Previously, the PBS Kids block encompassed a much larger portion of the daytime schedule, including both before- and after-school hours throughout the morning and afternoon. Many PBS stations had already begun transitioning to shorter morning blocks, but this change pushed nearly all stations to shorten their daytime children’s schedules to morning hours only. PBS cited changes in viewing behaviors, and decided that it was advantageous to focus their children’s programming in the mornings and cater to more general audiences in the afternoons, while continuing to grow their audience on the 24/7 kids service.[29]

As online streaming began to increase in popularity, PBS launched the PBS Kids Go! video player on its website on September 8, 2008. This federally-funded, innovative video streaming platform featured video clips from a number of PBS Kids Go! shows which rotated on a weekly basis and linked to interactive online games.[30] The video player later expanded to include all PBS Kids programming, and the entire platform evolved into the PBS Kids Video app, which initially became publicly available for free on May 12, 2011.[31] The PBS Kids Video app is currently the primary source for free streaming of on-demand video clips and full episodes of PBS Kids programming. It also features a live stream of the PBS Kids 24/7 Channel feed.

On May 8, 2013, PBS Kids programming was added to the Roku streaming player.[32]

On July 1, 2016, Amazon Prime Video and PBS Distribution entered into a multi-year agreement which saw several PBS Kids series on other streaming services move to Amazon Prime Video.[33] The PBS Kids subscription allows families to stream nearly all PBS Kids programs currently broadcast on air; however, notable exceptions exist, namely Sesame Street, which streams on Max,[34] and Curious George, which streams on NBCUniversal's Peacock.[35] The PBS Kids add-on service also includes several retired series, such as Reading Rainbow, Kratts' Creatures, and It's a Big Big World.

A selection of PBS Kids brand programming is available outside of the United States through PBS Distribution, PBS International and GBH, who jointly offer a PBS Kids subscription channel and on-demand video services to international audiences.[36]

PBS Distribution partnered with MultiChoice to launch PBS Kids on May 22, 2019, on DStv and GOtv platforms across its Sub-Saharan Africa footprint.[37]

PBS Distribution partnered with Foxtel to launch PBS Kids on July 1, 2021, in Australia.[38] The channel was discontinued two years later on July 1, 2023.[39][40]

• PBS Kids Family Night (April 21, 2017[41] – present) – an evening programming block airing encores of PBS Kids movies and specials, typically from 7 to 9 pm on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. Exclusive to the PBS Kids 24/7 channel.[42]

• The Game (October 7, 1996 – September 6, 1999) – an afternoon programming block aimed at children ages 6 to 8. Aired on PTV.[43]
• PBS Kids Bookworm Bunch (September 30, 2000 – September 5, 2004) – a Saturday morning block consisting of six animated series produced by the Canadian animation studio, Nelvana Limited.[44]
• PBS Kids Go! (October 11, 2004 – October 7, 2013) – an afternoon programming block aimed at children ages 6 to 8.[15][17]
• PBS Kids Preschool Block (September 4, 2006 – October 7, 2013) – a morning programming block aimed at preschoolers.[45][46]

On September 6, 1999, PBS launched the PBS Kids Channel in several markets, in conjunction with the introduction of the PBS Kids brand to provide a unified branding for the service's children's programming offerings. The separate network (referred to as the PBS Kids Channel in press materials) was available on high-tier subscription providers, and was also offered to PBS member stations for use on a "cablecast" service (a subscription-based local channel provided by the member station) or for use on the member station's free-to-air analog channel to provide a portion of the daytime PBS Kids programming on the station. Participating stations were required to pay an annual fee of $1,000 to use the feed. The channel was launched on over 30 PBS member stations with carriage methods ranging from a cable-only service, to a standard-definition digital subchannel, to analog simulcasts.[12] Additional affiliates would pick up the channel later throughout the fall and winter of 1999.

FCC requirements mandated satellite providers to set aside 4% of their available channel space for noncommercial educational and informational programming. With these providers limited to offering one such service per programmer, PBS had put forth PBS Kids as a prospective channel to fulfill this mandate.[52]

The channel was also partly created to compete against the Nick Jr. block and its sister network Noggin; at the time, Noggin was co-owned by the Children's Television Workshop (the production company behind Sesame Street) and Nickelodeon.[13][53] Because the pay-TV rights to the Children's Television Workshop's programs were owned by Noggin, the channel did not broadcast CTW programming, including longtime PBS staple Sesame Street, though an exception was made with Dragon Tales (which premiered on the same day as the launch of the PBS Kids Channel).

The channel was unsuccessful and had only reached 9 million households as of 2002, compared to Noggin's 23.3 million households at the time.[54] In the aftermath of DirecTV's decision not to renew its funding agreement with the channel, which ended in the third quarter of 2005,[55] PBS decided to shut down the network on September 26 of that year. PBS Kids Channel was effectively supplanted on that date by PBS Kids Sprout, an advertiser-supported cable and satellite channel that PBS developed in a joint venture with Sesame Workshop, HIT Entertainment and Comcast[56] (who later bought full control of the network via NBCUniversal).[57]

PBS gave local stations an option to sign on PBS Kids Sprout promoters, providing them cross-promotional and monetary benefits in exchange for giving up the ability to carry a competing preschool-targeted channel. For example, PBS member station WBGU-TV aired promotional spots for PBS Kids Sprout during their PBS Kids daytime block,[58] thereby forfeiting their eligibility to air a children's channel locally. 80 stations, making up about half of the member stations participants, signed up to be promoters; most of the remaining stations opted to develop independent children's programming services featuring programs distributed by PBS and through outside distributors such as American Public Television to fill space on digital subchannels that formerly served as PBS Kids Channel members.[16] Many of the member stations that launched children's-focused subchannel or cable-only services reduced the amount of sourced programming from PBS Kids carried on their primary channel to a few hours of their weekday daytime schedules, in order to program more adult-targeted fare during the afternoon.[16]

PBS relaunched the PBS Kids Channel on January 16, 2017.[21] Structured as a multi-platform service, it was made available for distribution to digital subchannels of participating PBS member stations, initially launching on 73 member stations (counting those operated as subregional PBS member networks), with an additional 34 agreeing to begin carrying the network at a later date. A live stream of the channel was also added to the PBS Kids website and video app upon the channel's debut, which will eventually allow viewers to toggle from the program being aired to a related educational game extending the interactivity introduced by Sesame Street. The network is counterprogrammed from the PBS Kids block, so that the same program would not be shown on either simultaneously. PBS Kids 24/7 mainly features double-runs of existing series on PBS Kids' schedule (including some not carried on the primary channels of certain member stations); as such, no additional programs had to be acquired to help fill the channel's schedule.[19] On April 21, 2017, the network launched "PBS Kids Family Night," a weekly block on Friday evenings (with encore airings on Saturday and Sunday evenings) that showcase themed programming, premieres or special "movie-length" episodes of new and existing PBS Kids children's programs.[51][21][19][59]